


The Garden

by movies_michelle



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: Gen, Multi, Yuletide 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 05:28:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/movies_michelle/pseuds/movies_michelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Athelstan's heathen garden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Garden

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dweo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dweo/gifts).



> Thank you to M'Lyn for the emergency beta!

Athelstan was finishing up with the pigs when he felt a strike across his shoulders. He fell as much from surprise as from the force of the blow.

"How do you expect to protect my children when you cannot even protect yourself?" Lagertha asked as she stood over him, sword pointed just under his ribs.

Athelstan, dazed and shoulders aching, was sure there was no right answer to that question.

"Get up. Now," Lagertha said when he hesitated. Athelstan rose to his feet and began to speak. "Quiet," Lagertha said. She tossed him a short axe, which he caught on instinct, but with no grace. "Go."

He walked outside into the gathering evening, and saw Ragnar sitting on the woodpile, smiling, as if he was sitting in a pub in Kattegat with his friends. "Best to listen to her, priest," he said, drinking from the cup in his hand, and settling back.

Athelstan blushed and looked away. The previous night, he'd been subjected to more hours of listening to Ragnar and Lagertha coupling wildly - all the more passionately, it seemed, since Ragnar had told them Lagertha would accompany the raiding party to Northumbria this time. But it felt as if he could never escape those eyes watching him, since he first saw them staring down at him in Lindisfarne. Ragnar always seemed to look at him, measuring him, and Athelstan knew not what he was seeing. A source of information at first, obviously (and Athelstan could blame the drink for his loose tongue, but would not add lying to God and himself to his long list of sins). A slave for the labor on the farm they did not wish to do, plainly. But that didn't explain those eyes, always assessing, almost always laughing (burning). And while not as heavy as Ragnar's gaze, he felt Lagertha's eyes on him as well, heard the whispers (during, after) from behind the slatted wall between his pallet and their bed.

Athelstan was not so sheltered that he did not know he was being seduced - and not so self-deluded he did not feel the pull of that seduction - he just was unsure of what he was being seduced _for_.

Lagertha slapped her sword against Athelstan's backside, sending him stumbling in his surprise, but getting his attention, as she'd obviously intended. "You shall protect my children better than you did your temple, priest," Lagertha said, pitilessly. 

Athelstan felt his face sting and redden in shame, but he still turned a glare to Ragnar when he heard, "That would not take much." Ragnar held his hands up in mock surrender at Athelstan's look. "Pay attention to your lesson."

"Raise your weapon," Lagertha instructed. 

So began what felt like hours of humiliation and bruises, as Lagertha knocked him down again and again, making him stand up to defend himself each time.

Adding to the humiliation, of course, were Ragnar's comments, thrown out with laughter as he stumbled up each time. 

"How can I leave you with them?" Lagertha finally said in disgust, breathing somewhat heavily, and spitting on the ground next to him. "When you can't even defend yourself?"

Athelstan again remembered his fallen brothers, those that Ragnar and his shipmates had slaughtered or led away in chains with himself.

He could do nothing for them now, his long-gone brothers, but he could protect these children. Even Bjorn, who scorned his protection.

Athelstan surged to his feet and came at her again.

He didn't know when it all changed. He knew he was standing longer, and even moved to push against her once or twice. Perhaps she allowed it, but Athelstan didn't believe so: she was merciless when it came to her children, and she would hold her ground against anyone for their sake.

But he noticed at some point that Ragnar's taunts were fewer, and Lagertha pressed against him for longer before knocking him down. More often than not, she was no longer pushing him to the ground, but towards Ragnar, who would push him back into the fight.

He knew the look in Lagertha's eyes, though. He'd seen it more than once as evening closed and she and Ragnar moved abed. He'd seen it to varying degrees almost every night before he had to try and block out the sounds they made together. They never tried to hide what they did, even if he did not allow himself to look. Even so, he felt both sets of eyes upon him.

He was no boy, he knew what Father Cuthbert spoke about when he warned of the evil of Eve and the Sin of Onan and the downfall of Sodom. He knew how his body stirred when he saw a pretty girl in the market or even heard his brothers breaking their vows in the cell next to his. He knew what Lagertha and Ragnar offered, and he felt the pull of it, even as he tried to stay true to God.

They'd not asked him again, though, after that first night. Athelstan was unsure of what he'd say, when – if - they did.

Another missed counter-move, another shove towards Ragnar, who Athelstan now saw was grinning widely as he reached his hands up to catch him. Suddenly exhausted and desperate, he found he could no longer ignore the truth of what this was: training of two kinds, it felt like.

"Why?" Athelstan asked, not sure he wanted to know the answer, but certain he could not stop the question any longer, not moving from Ragnar's hands. "Why don't you just _take_?"

"I don't think of you as my slave," Ragnar said in a voice Athelstan would have called kind, if he hadn't seen those hungry eyes. "How could I take what doesn't belong to me?"

"But I hear...what they call me...," Athelstan said, not looking away from those eyes for once.

"I know what they call you," Ragnar said, moving suddenly, and turning Athelstan so he faced Lagertha. " _Ergi_. But you're not, are you?" And still Ragnar's voice was smooth and calming, a voice one might use on a startled horse.

 _Or a stalking goat,_ Athelstan thought as Lagertha moved before him.

"Not yet," Ragnar finished.

Athelstan panted, exertion and arousal warring for his breath as Ragnar braced him from behind and held him in place. Ragnar's breath was hot against his neck, and Athelstan closed his eyes, just for a moment, wishing for more, but opened them again as he watched Lagertha come near, then stop.

"Not yet," Ragnar said again, pulled away and smiled, then walked to Lagertha before leading her back to the house. 

They'd been particularly energetic that night, and the Blessed words of St. John did not drown them out a bit.

*

Athelstan's time with the children was...fraught. Gyda appeared to delight in him, and the feeling quickly became mutual. The work of the farm was not much different from the work he had done at the monastery, even without the times for vespers and scribing. 

Her requests for help with her hair was not something the priesthood had prepared him for, however.

Bjorn alternated between mystified and scornful. It was not the first such reaction he had since coming to this land, and while Bjorn obviously had no respect for his standing in the household—which was as unclear to Athelstan as anyone—he did fear the reaction of his father and mother enough to obey most of Athelstan's edicts, and Athelstan appreciated that enough to not give too many directions.

Athelstan had not slept well since Ragnar and Lagertha had left on their raids to Northumbria. Not long ago, he'd been ensconced in his abbey, singing and praying as they all awaited Judgment Day, which they all knew was imminent, even before the portents began to show themselves. It was terrifying in its own way, but comfortable in its familiar refrain.

Then Judgment Day had come, and gone, and while his brothers had been struck down or sold into slavery, here he was still. And what was he? Before, he'd known his place in the world: a monk, a sinner as all were. Now, he wasn't sure. Captive. Slave. Beast of burden. He'd thought Ragnar's words of "I do not think of him as a slave," were just more seduction, more hisses in the Garden, but what more could he want from him? He'd gotten all the information he could need, that Athelstan could provide, spilled at his feet without resistance, like tribute. 

Then he'd put Athelstan in charge of his children. If this were his 30 pieces of silver, it was a strange payment for Athelstan's mead-soaked betrayal of his countrymen.

Athelstan did not understand Ragnar Lothbrok, and rather than time bringing illumination, it brought only more confusion. 

As much as he was uncertain of where he stood here in this place, this heathen family, as much as he feared for what havoc Ragnar and Lagertha would wreak on Northumbria, he was glad to have Ragnar and Lagertha gone for a little while so he could think. He had not had much time, even though they left him to his chores most days. But always, always he felt Ragnar's eyes on him, whenever he was home. The weight of those eyes always watching, measuring, judging, and never giving away what he was looking for. Then dropping this on him, the burden and gift of both false freedom and responsibility.

If Ragnar was hard to comprehend, Lagertha was worse. Where he was a wolf pacing him through the woods, waiting for Athelstan to fall it felt at times, she was a fox: no less ready to strike, but more patient, harder to see, harder to explain.

Athelstan had tried to cast her as Lilith in his head, when Ragnar first brought him here: conniving and proud, the snake always offering the apple to him, tempting him from his vows, from God. That first night, he felt the pull, to her, to Ragnar, both unclothed and shameless, covered in the sweat of their lust and inviting him to join them. He'd condemned her as Temptress then, if only in his head. But it soon became clear: she was no devourer of children. He had no doubt, however, that she could eat a man whole, especially any who threatened what was hers.

He found himself as anxious for their return as the children. He had thought this time alone, away from the eyes of Ragnar and Lagertha, would give him a chance to pray, to find his way back to God. But he feared more and more that God was not listening. Had never listened.

Finally, he had agreed to go to Kattegat with the children, to greet the returning raiders (and the knowledge did not stop twisting inside him, but he found it fading more and more each day, which was its own twist of guilt). Then there had been the arrest and trial. Then the upheaval of Rollo's surprise testimony and Ragnar's release. Then drinking and the fighting.

A far more dramatic homecoming than Athelstan had expected. 

When, finally, the family returned to the farm, it was nearly dawn, and Athelstan had not slept. The children were dead to the world (Athelstan expected Bjorn to not rise again on his own for at least two days, between the excitement and the mead he'd been allowed), and deposited in their respective beds. The chores, however, would not wait, and Athelstan was splashing water on himself before he went to begin them.

"The goats can tend to themselves for a little while longer," Lagertha said behind him.

He turned to find her, gown loose around her and no longer restricted by her girdle, hair pulled down from her braids, and she looked so much like she had that first night, Athelstan was shocked. But now she was flushed with the safe return of her children and husband and the riches they piled into the stores. There was also a hunger there where there had previously been more curiosity. 

Ragnar, who had lost his outer clothing and shirt in the short time they had been home, walked towards him again, the predator once more in his eyes.

How did God expect him to resist this?

"You took care of my children," she said softly, not moving, as if that said it all. He supposed it said much to her.

"They took care of themselves," he told her.

She smiled at him, even as he saw Ragnar circling him out of the corner of his eye. "So Bjorn said," Lagertha acknowledged.

Ragnar touched the back of his neck, and his breath caught.

In that moment, he was too tired to fight, too relieved that they were home, and too far from the home he once knew. He'd be wracked with guilt later, he knew, but right now the desire was stronger than he was.

"You didn't ask yet," he said, barely making sense to himself.

"You know of the Valkyrie," Ragnar whispered into his ear, his hands moving down to Athelstan's tunic. 

Ragnar said no more, so Athelstan swallowed, a dry clicking in his throat as he watched Lagertha stand watching him, a hunting cat with her prey. "They..." he croaked, "they choose which warriors will go to Valhalla with Odin," he finished.

"Yes," Ragnar hissed, the serpent in Athelstan's personal garden, and Athelstan shuddered as he felt those lips and a fleeting bit of tongue touch his ear. "But you know what happens before that, little priest?"

Athelstan found he could not speak, and simply shook his head, pinned between the gaze of Lagertha and the hands of Ragnar.

"Freyja," Ragnar said more loudly, "chooses first."

And Lagertha moved.

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, far more research went into not-writing this story than actually wound up in here, but some of it did, even in this tiny thing. The historical Viking resource for this story, including language, was [The Viking Answer Lady](http://www.vikinganswerlady.com/). 
> 
> Ergi=a man sexually submissive to another man


End file.
